Bronte Steam

Contents

AUTHOR:

Robin Jones rjones@mortons.co.uk

PRODUCTION EDITOR:

Sarah Palmer

PAGE DESIGN:

Craig Lamb Kriele Ltd design_lamb@btinternet.com

COVER DESIGN: Kelvin Clements

REPROGRAPHICS:

Paul Fincham Jonathan Schofield

ADVERTISING:

Craig Amess camess@mortons.co.uk

MR 4F 0-6-0 No. 43924 and guest locomotive LMS ‘Black Five’ 4-6-0 No. 44871 stand in Haworth yard on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway as the snow falls on the evening of December 29, 2017. No. 44871, which is owned by Bury engineer Ian Riley, hauled Santa the train over the festive season that year, and was also booked to appear in the line’s 2018 spring steam gala, along with another guest, Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway 7F 2-8-0 No. 88 from the West Somerset Railway hauled the Santa train, and also guest locomotive Oliver Cromwell. ANDREW RAPACZ

Steve O’Hara Tim Hartley

BRONTE STEAM

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50 years of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway 004 006 008 020 028 038 050 052 062 074 084 098 108 114 122 128

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INTRODUCTION

ISBN:

978-1-911276-46-3

CHAPTER 1

Dream weavers of the Worth Valley… first time round

CHAPTER 2

Steaming into the land of romance

CHAPTER 3

Closed before the Beeching Axe fell

CHAPTER 4

The long road to Oxenhope

CHAPTER 5

The first locomotives arrive

CHAPTER 6

The reinvention of Christmas

Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6JR. Tel: 01507 529529

CHAPTER 7

The day the trains came back!

COPYRIGHT:

CHAPTER 8

The Railway Children and beyond

CHAPTER 9

First out of Barry

CHAPTER 10

The fabulous steam fleet!

CHAPTER 11

Days for diesels

CHAPTER 12

Your carriage awaits, madam… yours too sir!

CHAPTER 13

Fabulous Flying Scotsman’s fleeting visit

CHAPTER 14

The 21st-century Railway Children

CHAPTER 15

Now for the next 50 years – and beyond

PUBLISHED BY:

Mortons Media Group Ltd, 2018 All rights reserved.

All pictures marked * are published under a Creative Commons licence.

Full details may be obtained at http://creativecommons.org/licences

No part of this publication may be produced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

COVER PICTURE: Ivatt 2MT 2-6-2T No. 41241 and USA 0-6-0T No. 30072 being prepared for the reopening special in Haworth yard on June 29, 1968. BARNARD LUMB

photocopying, recording, or any information storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

BRONTE STEAM 3

Introduction

KEIGHLEY & WORTH VALLEY RAILWAY A LINE OF IMAGINATION

D

uring my English degree course, a friend and I became so enraptured

by Emily’s Bronte’s classic novel Wuthering Heights, backed up by a series of excellent lectures, that we vowed on that very cold and snowy winter’s day, we would make a pilgrimage one day to Haworth to walk over those wild and windy moors to Top Withens, the ruined farmhouse said to be an inspiration for the home of Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw, so we could immerse ourselves in the atmosphere that had inspired the writer.

For one reason or another, it never happened, and it would be another 20 years before I ventured into the Worth Valley. That was when my career path led me into railway journalism, and between Keighley and Oxenhope, I found a heritage railway the magic of which, for me, equalled or even bettered anything that the Bronte sisters came up with.

There are around 120 heritage lines in the UK today, and in the sector of standard gauge, the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway at 4¾ miles is one of the shortest. Yet here I discovered a railway in a million.

Mile by mile, yard by yard, I do not

The late Bob Cryer MP, the first Keighley & Worth Valley Preservation Society chairman. KWVR

4 BRONTE STEAM

know of any similar railway with so much to offer and discover over such a comparatively short distance. Every station has its own individual appeal and attractions and is worth a visit in itself; the magnificent variety of the steam and diesel locomotive and carriage fleets is truly awe-inspiring. Furthermore, it is home to three significant and associated groups in the Vintage Carriages Trust, the Bahamas Locomotive Society and the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Trust.

This railway is a treasure of national, and yes, even international, rather than merely regional, significance.

The revival of the closed Oxenhope branch by local people began not with the aim of creating a preserved railway, but to restore services that had been snatched away. Of course, history records that the KWVR did emerge as a market leader in the heritage sector, but local residents still use it for transport along the valley.

In this special publication to mark half a century of public services on the KWVR since it reopened on June 29, 1968, I have endeavoured to place it in the long and winding story of the evolution of the railway sector. It was not the fi rst heritage line by any means, but the KWVR broke new ground and blazed trails for others to follow, not least of all the purchase of the branch from British Rail. Indeed, the KWVR is unique in that it is still the only heritage line to have bought – rather than leased – the entire length of its original branch including the operational main line connection at Keighley. The KWVR does lease its section of Keighley station and the track through the station to the mainline from Network Railway.

The many-faceted ground-breaking heritage line that we have today is the result of herculean efforts by a multitude of volunteers including both enthusiasts and local residents over nearly six decades. It would take a telephone directory to credit them all, and their achievements were undoubtedly helped by the publicity that followed the release of EMI’s big-screen production of The Railway Children, for which the line provided location fi lming, in 1970. As with the Bronte sisters’ novels, Haworth and its district became a meeting point of imagination and reality, and the railway still retains a unique romantic

Ralph Povey, whose letter to a local newspaper proved to be the foundation stone of the movement to revive the Worth Valley branch. KWVR

charm as immortalised in Lionel Jeffries’ blockbuster movie.

However, there are two people without whose vision we would not have this magnificent railway today. The fi rst is Ralph Povey, an Oakworth resident who had been calling for organised volunteer-led railway revival schemes since 1959 and two years later suggested in a letter to the Bradford Telegraph and Argus that the Worth Valley branch

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, visited the KWVR on Friday, February 16, at their start of their 50th anniversary year celebrations and met staff and volunteers before taking a special ‘royal train’ from Haworth to Oxenhope. KWVR

A half-inch to the mile map of 1939 showing the position of the Worth Valley branch in relation to the surrounding rail network. ROBIN JONES COLLECTION

should be preserved. That letter led to what we see today.

Ralph served as president of the Keighley & Worth Valley Preservation Society from 1978-99 and passed away in 2007 aged 84, having spent his last years with his wife Marion in a cottage near Oxenhope station.

The second is Bob Cryer, a University of Hull economics graduate who was

determined that the Worth Valley branch would not go the same way as the adjoining Great Northern line from Keighley to Bradford. He attended the first meeting of the revivalists and served as society chairman from 1962-72, being re-elected annually by members, and under him the railway ascended to the pinnacle of excellence that it is today. He was a qualified steam

A system diagram of the Worth Valley branch. SARAH PALMER

driver on the line until the late Seventies and became the society’s vice-president.

Bob served as a Labour MP for Keighley from February 1974-83 and represented Bradford South from 1987-94. A Eurosceptic, he was MEP for Sheffield from 1984-89.

However, tragedy struck on April 12, 1994, when the car Bob was driving to London overturned on the M1 near Watford and he was killed.

His wife Ann, whom he married in 1963, survived the crash and went on to become an MP in her own right, representing Keighley from 1997-2010.

She is president of the society having also been a member from its early days.

In his tribute to Bob at his memorial service in St George’s Hall, Bradford, on April 22, 1994, society chairman, Graham Mitchell, said: “The Worth Valley Railway has always been neutral territory, a classless society where a person’s age, sex, race, income, religion… or politics have never signified very much. But integrity has always been significant. No-one could ignore, or fail to admire, Bob’s total sincerity; always completely honest and straightforward, a man of boundless optimism and enthusiasm, he was a lifelong supporter of public transport.

“Five thousand society members have lost a great man; a true friend and a loyal champion. We owe him an enormous debt. I hope that the KWVR will be seen as one of his lasting memorials. For all that you have done for us, thank you Bob.” Ralph and Bob were no mere railway revival pioneers. They are giants in the story of UK transport heritage, and it is to them that this 50th anniversary publication is dedicated with immense gratitude.

Ingrow West is the first station after leaving Keighley. The original building had fallen into decay and following a hugely successful appeal to members, was replaced with one from Foulridge, which closed in 1959, on the Skipton to Colne line.

The station now houses two award-winning museums, the Vintage Carriages Trust’s Museum of Rail Travel and Ingrow Loco, home of the Bahamas Locomotive Society, plus the VCT Rail Story learning coach.

The next station, Damems, is a request stop and Damems is only long enough for one coach making it the smallest ‘full-size’ station in Britain. The current booking office and waiting room are new structures based on the Midland Railway original. A winner many times of the Best Restored Station competition, Oakworth was just a small country station with a goods shed and yard serving the nearby village until it soared to worldwide fame in the 1970 EMI big-screen version of The Railway Children.

Haworth has the largest station and goods yard on the railway, and has a large locomotive works and a shop. It is the base for the railway’s engineering needs.

Oxenhope, the terminus, is also the home for operational coaches. It contains the exhibition shed, which is used for storing coaches that are less well-used and long-term out-ofuse locomotives, and is open to the public. The vehicles inside are very regularly changed according to operational needs.

BRONTE STEAM 5

Chapter 1

An early 20th-century view of Haworth village. ROBIN JONES COLLECTION

Bronte Falls on Haworth Moor. Charlotte Bronte wrote: “There rises some low rock, All wet with surge’s spray.” ROBIN JONES COLLECTION

DREAM WEAVERS OF THE WORTH VALLEY ...FIRST TIME ROUND Haworth and its wild untamed moors became world famous in the 19th century through the literary works of three sisters, who would never have guessed that history would be repeated more than a century later, when another author’s novel would bring crowds flocking to the Worth Valley.

I

n 1820, Irish priest and author Rev Patrick Bronte accepted the post of curate of St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Haworth in the Worth Valley and moved there with his young family.

Nearly three decades later, three of his daughters, Charlotte, Anne and Emily had produced some of the greatest masterpieces of English literature before their lives were cut short by illness at relatively early ages.

The wild and rugged moorland setting around the village in which they spent their adolescence provided a fertile ground for their imaginations.

Led by Emily Anne, the three conjured up a fantasy island called Gondal, which became the basis for a series of poems written at fi rst for their own amusement, and later published with all references to the imaginary land removed. Weaving together strands of English Romanticism, the Gothic tradition, shadows of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but most of all, the substance and raw energy of the landscape of their own environment, Emily produced what many consider to be the fi nest piece of all 19th century prose in the novel Wuthering Heights. It was published in

6 BRONTE STEAM

1847, a year before her untimely death from consumption at the age of 30 on December 21, 1848.

Emily never spelled out exactly which real buildings, if any, inspired her only novel. As the work snowballed in popularity over the decades that

Sir Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the 1939 film Wuthering Heights.

followed its publication under the pseudonym, Ellis Bell, many pointed to the ruined farmhouse of Top Withens near the Brontes’ home of Haworth Parsonage, although it does not match the description in the book.

Top Withens was fi rst suggested as the model by Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey, when she spoke to Edward Morison Wimperis, an artist commissioned to illustrate the Bronte sisters’ novels in 1872.

The sisters’ older brother Branwell had been appointed as assistant clerk for the Leeds & Bradford Extension Railway in 1840 – only to be sacked 18 months later when he was held responsible for a default in the books.

Emily did not live long enough to see the railway encroach upon her wild

Out on those wild and windy Haworth Moors, as depicted in an early 20th century postcard. ROBIN JONES COLLECTION LEFT: Capitalising on the fame of its former residents in the early 20th century was Haworth post office. ROBIN JONES COLLECTION

and windy moors: the line from Leeds reached Keighley in 1847, six years before the last of the family, Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre, died during her fi rst pregnancy along with her unborn child.

Branwell Bronte died at Haworth parsonage on September 24, 1848, most likely from tuberculosis aggravated by delirium tremens, alcoholism, as well as laudanum and opium addiction, apparently worsened by a failed relationship with a married woman, bringing the family’s short railway connection to an end.

Critics were divided about Wuthering Heights when it was fi rst published. However, both it and novels

by Charlotte and Anne Bronte soared in popularity over the decades that followed their publication.

In the early 1860s, engineer John Landsborough, in response to clamour from Worth Valley mill owners, drew up a plan for a branch line in the Worth Valley.

He outlined the multiple benefits that a railway connection would bring to the valley… and also, almost as an afterthought mentioned the possibility of tourists being brought in by train to see for themselves the moorland landscapes in which the Bronte works had been set.

The Brontes have been big business for more than a century in Haworth; with gift shops, restaurants and even a caravan site named after them, such

A portrait made by Branwell Bronte about 1833: sources disagree as to whether this image is of Emily or Anne Bronte.

is the legacy of this talented family, not to mention Haworth Parsonage itself, which is now the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Wuthering Heights has inspired adaptations, including fi lm, radio and television dramatisations, a musical, a ballet, operas, and in 1978, a

One of the infamous tame sheep of Haworth Moor stands in front of the ruined farmhouse known as Top Withens, which may have been the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. TJ BLACKWELL*

hit by Kate Bush, which launched her career. The most famous adaptation of all was 1939’s American movie Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier (Heathcliff) and Merle Oberon (Cathy Earnshaw) directed

by William Wyler and produced by Samuel Goldwyn.

However, the drawing together of divergent ideas and influences and the blending of them into a new whole to create something magical, a unique and perfect fusion of fantasy and reality, far greater than the sum of its components, and with worldwide appeal, did not perish in these parts along with Haworth’s great literary family.

The Worth Valley was to come alive once more a century after John Landsborough fi rst made his appearance there.

It would involve no less than an entire community working together to save their local branch line, with more than a little help from a writer who lived around half a century after the Bronte sisters, and her classic children’s novel that the Worth Valley ‘borrowed’ and immortalised with no less resounding impact.

In 1962, in 1968 and 1970, as we shall see in the chapters that follow, the fertile mills of the dream weavers of the Worth Valley were back in full production, and their steel wheels are turning to this day!

Grade I listed Haworth Parsonage, where the three Bronte sisters spent most of their short lives, is now the Bronte Parsonage Museum. It is maintained by the Bronte Society, a registered charity. The parsonage was used as a location in the 1970 EMI film The Railway Children, where it became the home of Dr Forrest.

DEFACTO* BRONTE STEAM 7

Chapter 2

STEAMING INTO

THE LAND OF

ROMANCE

Running into the heart of Bronte Country, the branch from Keighley to Oxenhope was built not so that literary fans could visit the moors made famous by the three sisters – but to facilitate the growth of industry in the Worth Valley.

Tourism came much later.

8 BRONTE STEAM

Midland 0-6-0T No. 1823 with early bogie stock passes what is now Damems loop in 1920.

B

ack in the mid-19th century, the Worth Valley was a hive of industry with its landmark woollen mills, and for a long time local mill owners had been calling on the valley to join the railway revolution.

As local wool was lacking in both quantity and quality, they needed to bring in more from outside, principally from Leicestershire but also from the Cotswolds.

A line was needed to serve the valley, but local mill owners lacked the knowledge as to how to go about it. They need a man who could – and found it in draper’s son John McLandsborough.

Born in Otley in 1820 he went on to train as a civil engineer. He became a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The greater part of McLandsborough’s professional practice was taken up with drains and sewerage engineering but he had experience of railway building with the Otley & Ilkley Joint Railway. While he lived in Otley, his business moved to Bradford in 1856, and he became frustrated at the lack of a rail link between the towns.

He lobbied the Midland Railway to build a line from Bradford to Otley and Ilkley.

This was a 6½-mile line linking the three towns, built to bring wealthy Ilkley residents to their place of work in Bradford, to give access from Bradford to Otley for the agricultural traffic, but also, and very importantly, to keep the North Eastern Railway out of Bradford and the Aire and Wharfe valleys, which gave an easy direct route to the west coast, much easier and cheaper to work than the arduous trans-Pennine Stainmore route.

The Ilkley to Otley line was owned

Spinning machines at Bradford Industrial Museum, Bradford. LINDA SPASHETT*

and managed by the Midland and North Eastern railways, but the section forming the middle of that route (Menston/Burley-in-Wharfedale) to Bradford was entirely Midland. The North Eastern had its own route into Leeds from Otley and used running powers into Bradford for a limited Harrogate to Bradford service. This also gave the Midland access to Harrogate from London. The route opened to passenger traffic on August 1, 1865 and freight several months later.

In 1861, McLandsborough visited Haworth and described himself as “a pilgrim at the shrine of Charlotte Bronte” and was surprised at the locality’s lack of a rail link.

McLandsborough and his friend, the Midland’s Sir Matthew William Thompson, who was also a Bradford brewer and banker, drew up a ‘package deal’. They would promote, build and work the line, in return for the interest paid on its building.

Keighley station had been opened in March 1847 by the Leeds & Bradford Extension Railway, and was rebuilt on its present site in 1883.

The Leeds & Bradford (ShipleyColne Extension) Railway Act of June 30, 1845, was strongly opposed by commercial interests in the Worth Valley, because it gave Keighley an advantage over them. It was only when the Leeds & Bradford agreed to include a branch to Haworth (Springhead, not Bridgehouse as was eventually built) did they agree to withdraw opposition and support the project.

In July 1846, Leeds & Bradford Railway was leased to the Midland Railway, which it later absorbed on July 24, 1851.

The first section of the line ran from Shipley, at a triangular junction with the Leeds & Bradford Railway, to Keighley. The section opened on March 16, 1847 and included a 151-yd tunnel at Bingley.

A second section from Keighley to Skipton opened on September 7, 1847, at first single track, it had doubled by the end of the year. The final section between Skipton and Colne opened on October 2, 1848.

At Colne, it made an end-on junction with the East Lancashire Railway’s Blackburn, Burnley, Accrington & Colne Extension Railway, after that line opened on February 1, 1849. By April 2 that year, the line had become part of a through route between Leeds and Liverpool but most passenger trains were local services between Skipton and Colne. Eventually, Keighley found itself on the Midland’s main line route from London to Glasgow.

McLandsborough designed a route as far as Oakworth (named the Keighley & Vale of Worth Railway), with the route south of there to be determined.

BRONTE STEAM 9

THE FIRST CHAIRMAN Holden was born into a poor family in Hurlet, a village between Glasgow and Paisley. Nonetheless his father did his best to buy him an education. He was apprenticed for a short period as a draw boy for two hand weavers, but attended grammar schools and became a pupil teacher. He then tried to become a Wesleyan minister, before teaching at schools in Slaithwaite and Leeds.

In 1830 he moved to become a bookkeeper at Townsend Brothers’ worsted factory in Cullingworth near Bingley. Transferring to the technical side and becoming a manager, he sought to improve the process of combing wool.

Holden left Townsends in 1846 to set up a factory making Paisley shawls at Pit Lane in Bradford. When the business failed two years later he formed a partnership with Samuel Lister.

Holden and Lister worked together to develop the square motion woolcombing machine, which was patented

by Lister in 1848, although Holden had drafted the patent. The origins of the machine became the subject of a lifelong dispute between the two men.

Trading as Lister & Holden, in 1848 Isaac Holden set up a factory at St Denis near Paris, where over the next few years he perfected the square-motion machine. He then set up two more factories in France and after buying out Lister and renaming his firm Isaac Holden et Fils, he and his sons, Angus and Edward, set up an experimental

factory at Penny Oaks in Bradford. In 1864 they opened the massive Alston Works at Bradford.

Holden’s factories in England and France had, by the 1870s, become the largest wool combers in the world. He celebrated his success by building a large Italianate mansion at Oakworth near Keighley. Holden, a devout Wesleyan, also pledged £5000 to build 50 chapels in London.

In 1865, Holden was elected to Parliament as Liberal member for Knaresborough and in 1885 became MP for the Borough of Keighley; a seat he held for a decade.

In the late 1870s he personally bought all the debt owed by the KWVR, and then sold it on to the Midland Railway at a considerable profit. He was also the major shareholder so for several years, and in effect owned the KWVR. His fellow directors owned most of the balance of the shares and much of the debt, and were very relieved to be rid of both.

The Midland was desperate to avoid the branch falling to the Great Northern, which was trying to buy it for its route into Keighley from the valley for 150% of the face value of the capital plus a huge payment, equal to a 5% return on the capital since it was first created, but which had never been paid.

When Holden sold out to the Midland he made a very considerable profit, however, his fellow directors and the minority holders did not lose out, as they

THE MAKING OF OXENHOPE

high on the moor, putting Feather at an advantage. Therefore, the terminus was put at an equally inconvenient point for both of them (“corner of Mill Lane & Weasel Lane”) and as the nearest building was Old Oxenhope Hall, it was called Oxenhope. Had it gone to Feather’s, it was to have been called ‘Lowertown’. Indeed for a good while, the line’s name was the ‘Keighley & Lower Town Railway’.

It was only when all this had been agreed, in October 1862, that the present name, Keighley & Worth Valley Railway was agreed. No-one knows why, as the Worth Valley goes off to Springhead at Oakworth so half the line is not in the Worth Valley; the river being the Bridgehouse Beck. The Midland was foreseen to have no objection: after all, it had a monopoly on goods taken to and from the Worth Valley because they all had to be unloaded at Keighley, and a branch line from there would not harm the existing main line trade in any way – in fact, it was quite the opposite.

McLandsborough’s vision for the Worth Valley was by no means original.

The Railway Times of October 18, 1845,

Oxenhope as a village did not exist until the railway came. In legal terms it was a ‘hamlet’ and a ‘parish’ (from 1848). The name is derived from Old Oxenhope Hall, where there was also a small mill of the same name, on the edge of the moor, far above the valley where the railway was eventually built.

The decision to build the branch to Haworth (Bridgehouse) came as a result of Richard S Butterfield putting up the money to do so, in opposition to the Cravens and Merrels who wanted the line to go to Haworth (Springhead).

Only when that route was agreed was McLandsborough asked to survey a route to what then was known as Lowertown, a part of the hamlet and parish of Oxenhope where the Feather family had a mill at the side of the proposed terminus.

They put up £5000 and William Oates Greenwood, who owned Old Oxenhope Hall and mill, a further £5000.

However, they fell out over the location of the terminus, as planned it would be alongside Feather’s Lowertown Mill, but Greenwood’s was about a mile away 10 BRONTE STEAM

Isaac Holden, as painted by Samuel Sidley.

BRADFORD MUSEUMS GALLERIES & HERITAGE

were paid face value by him.

During his political life he campaigned for electoral reform, church disestablishment and Irish Home Rule.

In 1893, at the age of 86, he was created a Baronet, of Oakworth House in the County of York.

Holden died in August 1897, aged 90.

Oakworth House burned down in 1907 and in 1927 its grounds were given by the family to the people of Oakworth as a public park, named Holden Park.

We are jumping a decade or two ahead here though, because most importantly to us, Holden became a pivotal figure in the early life of the branch.

carried an advertisement asking for the subscription of £350,000 of capital for the Manchester, Hebden Bridge & Keighley Junction Railway, which was to run through Haworth with a branch to Oakworth. Like many schemes proposed during the height of Railway Mania, this line was never built.

However, the fact that a large number of people were ready to promote the scheme indicated demand and enthusiasm for a rail connection.

Nothing concrete happened until October 1861, when a delegation of businessmen from the Worth Valley met with Midland officials, who told them that the railway would support a branch from Keighley to Oxenhope, and would also operate it in return for half the receipts.

That autumn, the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Company was launched with 22 provisional directors, most of them local mill owners or their family members. Investors were told that the line would cost £36,000 (around £3 million by today’s standards) to build.

A total of 3134 shares worth £10 each were issued, and directors, bankers,

solicitors and engineers were elected.

McLandsborough was appointed acting engineer; while John Sydney Crossley of the Midland Railway was appointed consultant engineer.

On June 30, 1862, the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Act was passed in the House of Commons, and subsequently 200 individuals subscribed to provide the necessary fi nance to build it. However, in the event most did not pay up and the line had to be built with much more borrowed, rather than share capital, than was envisaged.

The following November, John Metcalfe of Bradford, a very close friend of McLandsborough and someone also known to Sir Matthew, was awarded the contract to build the branch. Notices were then served for the demolition of property and fields taken.

Shrove Tuesday, February 9, 1864, saw the fi rst sod cut by Isaac Holden, the chairman of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway Company. He stepped in as necessary to offer guidance and also to safeguard his own fi nancial interests.

A WESLEYAN CHAPEL UNDERMINED

Less than a year before he cut the fi rst sod, Holden had presided over the ceremony when the foundation stone was laid for the new Wesley Place Methodist chapel at Ingrow, which was to stand above the railway, and was to pass under nearby Halifax Road through a cut-and-cover tunnel. Holden performed this role as chairman of the chapel trustees.

To the left can be seen the damage to the Wesley Place Methodist church in 1865.

Work on the tunnel began, but only a few yards in, the workmen encountered unstable wet sandy soil.

The engineering solution was to drive piles to hold the walls of the cutting element of the ‘tunnel’, officially known as ‘Ingrow Covered Way’ creating, in effect, a very long bridge, on top of which five roads converge. There is only about two feet of cover over the tunnel crown, which is almost entirely brick.

However, the loss of a large quantity of quicksand, which held water that had

percolated from the moors, combined with vibrations from the piling operation to cause structural damage to the chapel overhead.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the chapel trustees handled a claim for compensation from the railway, and it was decided to dismantle the building and re-erect it. After nearly £3500 compensation was awarded, the new chapel opened in November 1867. It caused the railway company to go into what amounted to receivership.

The earliest-known image of Haworth station. KEIGHLEY DIGITAL ARCHIVE BRONTE STEAM 11

Did a member of the Midland Railway’s 29-strong 156 Class of 2-4-0 tender engines, designed by Matthew Kirtley and built at Derby Works between 1866-74, haul the test train over the newly completed Worth Valley line? Nobody knows for certain, but the type operated out of Leeds and Bradford to Ilkley at the time of the contractor’s trial run to Oxenhope for which he borrowed a locomotive from the Ilkley line. This class was the one that operated what are now the electrified services from Leeds and Bradford to Ilkley and Skipton in the last years of the 19th century. In September 1930, the LMS recognised the significance of the class and No. 156 was earmarked for preservation. But LMS Chief Mechanical Engineer William Stanier, who made it clear he had no time for history and conservation, ordered it to be scrapped two years later. No. 156 was based at Bradford at the time the Worth Valley line was opened, and could well have headed the test train. The sole-survivor is No. 158A, which is in static display at the Midland Railway-Butterley. ROBIN JONES

TEST RUN AND THUNDERSTORM

McLandsborough organised a test run along the branch once it was completed, using a locomotive borrowed from the Ilkley line on November 1, 1866. It was almost certainly Midland No. 101, 118,119 or 162, a 2-4-0 of the 75 or ‘large 70’ class.

A wagon was fitted out with planks to provide seats for McLandsborough, the Keighley stationmaster and his staff.

The outward journey from Keighley to Oxenhope took two hours, because frequent stops had to be made to remove debris from the line. However, the return trip took just 13 minutes.

The next step was to install lineside fences.

However, disaster struck when violent thunderstorms hit the locality on November 14. The storm was so severe that Apperley Viaduct between Leeds and Shipley collapsed. The branch, by comparison ‘got off lightly’, with just 40 yds of embankment washed away with 12 BRONTE STEAM

its track left suspended in mid-air.

Compounded by minor damage elsewhere, the storm preceded a fivemonth delay in opening the line. That was the reason given out in public, but it was not the real one, as not a great deal of damage had, in fact, been done. The real reason was that the Midland had not told its Chief Mechanical Engineer, Matthew Kirtley, that the line was ready for opening, or more correctly, the KWVR had not told the MR, so Kirtley was unaware.

Kirtley learned this only in October 1866, but had no suitable locomotives.

He hurriedly converted five locomotives into well tanks, the first being ready in March 1867, hence the opening in April that year.

As it was, the storm damage, combined with unforeseen costs, helped triple the cost of building the line. The prospectus had asked for £36,000 in subscriptions, but the total cost ended up at £111,422 17s 10d.

OPENING DAY The line opened on a dull wet Saturday on April 13, 1867. The first train comprised a tank engine, one of Nos. 213, 214 or 215, seven coaches and a guard’s van. Another two locomotives were converted later that year, bringing the line’s fleet up to the stipulated five.

The opening train slipped to a halt on the 1-in-58 gradient south of Keighley. It climbed the gradient at the second attempt, but stopped again between Oakworth and Haworth.

The VIP guests were treated to a celebratory dinner in the Mechanics Institute in Haworth.

At the opening-day dinner, the speeches made it quite clear that the line’s purpose was to carry goods, with passengers as a side line.

Speaker after speaker spoke of the pending coverage of the valley with mills. There were very few before 1867 and those already there were small affairs, employing fewer than 50 people and usually reliant on water power.

After 1875, and the coming of the railway, there was a mill-building boom RIGHT: A later view of Haworth station, showing how much development had taken place around it. KEIGHLEY DIGITAL ARCHIVE